Notes on the News

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 7 June 1938, Page 3

Notes on the News

Slovak Demands

It seems that the Republic of Czechoslovakia is in for a very thin time. Simultaneously with the announcement that l)r. Horlza, the Premier, has found a basis oil which to negotiate with the truculent Sudeten Germans, comes a report that 100,000 Slovak peasants, members of the Slovak Cal hoiic People’s Party, staged a demonstration in Bratislava in support of rheir demand for autonomy. The leader of this party, a Catholic priest called Father lllinka, declares that this autonomy must he secured, even at the cost of joining up with Germany or Poland. To this end the People’s Party is proposing a Bill aiming at the establishment of a Slovak Diet and Law Courts, and complete control of all Slovak matters. The Slovaks are a people belonging to the western branch of the Slav race. Before the war they inhabited Slovakia, which was a part of Hungary, j In BUS they joined up with the Czech? ! of Bohemia. Moravia and Silesia (for- , merl.v under Austrian rule), and, as a result of the tireless energies of Dr. 1 Musuryk and M. Benes, they were welded, by I lie d reary of Versailles into the present Republic of Czechoslovakia, i They nmu her. about 2,5(H ),()<>(). including the present Premier of the Republic. • Dr. Hitdza, and a number of Ministers , and high officials. In no sense of the word are they a racial "minority.” One People Before I lie war the one aim of the |. Slovaks was to join forces win, their Czech cousins in Hie north in an independent republic. And. in fact, the name Czechoslovak was current in Aus j tri.-i a limit 30 years before the war. The Czechs and the Slovaks—ill ways (he most restive of Ihe Emperor Franz Josefs subjects—were lumped togethei as being one people, which, in fact, they are. It was recognised that they were even more racially akin than, for i iiisiam-e.- tlk* English and the Scotch. The Slovak language is only a din feet of Czech. For (lie most pari I lie Czechs are a ’ peacelul race of peasants and not par 1 Menially given to political turbulence, but they have evidently been affected by the loud nationalistic trumpetingi Konrad Henlein. the Sudeten lead < l ■ nnd consider this a good opporlun ily 10 !l >'' some of their grievances. ] lr ~:1" only lie hoped, for the sak« <,r Czechoslovakia, that ihe other racial groups which go to make up the re public—the Hungarians (745.000). the I Rutheniums HOI.OUO). the Jews (100. t ooo). ami the Polos (75.000)—wi1l not i make similar claims for autonomy q That would be the end of Czccho.slova